June 16, 2010
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On June 16, the Senate defeated a procedural motion to advance the substitute amendment offered by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to the House-passed tax extenders and jobs bill that has been pending in the Senate since June 7.  The motion was designed to gauge support for Baucus’ amendment.

Following this defeat, Baucus put forward a new amendment making additional changes to the House-passed version to narrow it further to try to win enough support to pass the extenders bill this week or next.  Most of these changes make further reductions in spending on Medicaid and other social spending provisions included in the House bill.  The one-year Housing Credit Exchange program extension and money for the Housing Trust Fund included in the House-passed bill and the first Baucus substitute amendment are retained in the second Baucus substitute.

Of particular interest to NCSHA is an additional change Baucus included in his new amendment to add back the disaster (GO Zone and Midwest flood) Credit Exchange expansion, which the original Senate bill contained and several senators, led by Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), sought to add back to the House-passed bill.  Other senators may also attempt to add back items included in either the original House- or Senate-passed extender bills that were dropped when congressional leaders informally reconciled those two bills, producing the new bill the House considered, amended, and passed May 28.

We are also working with Finance Committee members to convince them to attempt to further expand the Exchange Program with 4 percent Credits, a provision we succeeded in including in the House-passed small business tax bill, large parts of which have now been rolled into the extender legislation.

Finally, we continue to work to extend the availability of the HERA Housing Bond authority and make other Credit changes to the pending Senate substitute amendment but are running into strong resistance from Senate leaders to expanding the legislation with items not included in earlier versions.

Please continue to remind your senators about the importance of the above-referenced Housing Bond and Credit changes and to press them to communicate their support to Senate leaders and Baucus for including them in the pending extender bill.

In further action on the new Baucus substitute amendment today, the Senate approved an amendment offered by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to extend the deadline by which home buyers must close on their house to qualify for the first-time and existing home buyer tax credits.  The amendment extends the deadline from June 30 this year to September 30.  The amendment does not change the April 30 deadline for entering into a signed sales contract to qualify for the credits.

If the Senate changes the House-passed bill, which seems certain, the House will have to consider the new Senate-passed bill and the two chambers will have to agree to a final version.  They hope to agree on a final version by July 2.